When Desert Daze 2018 opens kicks open its gates on Friday, the three-day festival will no longer technically be in the desert, though its cosmic transmissions of eclectic music and surreal art will still hold true, according to founder Phil Pirrone.

“What we’ve managed to achieve as a festival is really important to us,” Pirrone says of Desert Daze, which before landing at Moreno Beach in Lake Perris for its seventh incarnation this year had been in Joshua Tree. “We’ve managed to cultivate some kind of anti-festival that’s everything we need it to be and everything people like us need it to be.”

But as Desert Daze grew, attracting bigger acts and larger crowds, Pirrone says it no longer fit its former location with the comfort and safety it needed.

“Part of what makes Desert Daze what it’s like is what you feel like when you’re there,” he says. “So with the festival growing, we had to make a hard decision. And as much as we loved the desert we needed to find a location that would allow us to maintain that feeling as it grows. As the ritual itself grows.”

Desert Daze 2018 feature Tame Impala, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and My Bloody Valentine as headliners. Other well-known acts on the bill include Jarvis Cocker of Pulp’s new solo project, Mercury Rev, Slowdive, Death Grips, and Ty Segall and the White Fence.

They are acts that Pirrone says are chosen in part by how well they complement each other as a whole.

“We have an alchemic approach to the curation of the festival,” says Pirrone, whose own band, Jjuujjuu, plays Friday and Saturday. “We feel like every ingredient we put into the soup can alter the soup. It can really mess everything up. So each booking that we do sort of informs the next booking.”

It’s a big departure from the way most other festivals approach it, he says.

“The big festivals that we know are kind of a catch-’em-all,” Pirrone says. “There’s not a lot of cohesion. The only intention is to make money.

“I would say a business venture is probably the last thing (Desert Daze) is, and festivals have become big business,” he says. “We see how that’s going. It’s pretty plastic, it’s like homogenized milk.”

Desert Daze, to continue Pirrone’s analogy, is the raw milk of music festivals — less predictable, more unique, and different than what you’ll get almost any other place.

As for missing the desert, Pirrone says he hopes that he and everyone else at the festival will still managed to get a little dusty by the end of each day. And he hints that he’s not through with the desert entirely.

“We have every intention of doing things in the desert,” he says. “We’re not leaving the desert.”

But Lake Perris might be the site of Desert Daze for years to come, Pirrone adds.

“We have room to grow there,” he says. “A few more people this year without it feeling uncomfortable. And as the years go on, Lake Perris lends itself to that growth.

“But it’s still going to be a much more intimate gathering than most festivals people know.”

Desert Daze 2018

When: Friday, Oct. 12-Sunday, Oct. 14

Where: Moreno Beach, Via Del Lago and Moreno Beach Drive, Lake Perris

How much: Weekend passes range from $279-$549. Single-day tickets run from $99-$275

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.